Strike Gives Studio a ‘Titanic’ Headache

The movie studio that supplied the water-gushing suspense of “Titanic” is hip-deep in a curious little drama of its own.

Gates at the 20th Century Fox studios in Rosarito have been closed for more than a week--with top managers and a handful of workers shuttered inside--after a Mexican film union representing maintenance workers at the seaside lot declared a strike there June 9.

The union says Fox coerced workers into joining a rival film workers labor organization and reneged on contract terms dealing with sanitation, medical checkups for employees and payment of union dues and retirement funds. The studio dismisses the allegations as lies.

A black-and-red flag of the sort that customarily designates work stoppages in Mexico hangs from the front gate of the facility where Leonardo and Kate played out their waterlogged epic. Banners decry studio labor practices and encroachment by the rival union. Strike backers, some of whom have arrived from the union’s Mexico City headquarters, have kept a round-the-clock vigil, camping in front and greeting puzzled weekend tourists who hoped to visit the studio’s “Titanic” museum.

It’s an eye-catching scene. What’s missing are the strikers.

Only four of the 15 maintenance workers represented by the Technical and Manual Workers Union have actually taken to the picket line. The rest, who cast votes against the strike this week, remained on the job inside. A few are there still, along with a skeleton crew of security guards, office workers and the studio’s general manager, who have turned actors dressing rooms into living quarters and been sustained on food brought from the outside.

“This would have been a good agenda for a company retreat--sort of a survival school in here,” said general manager Charlie Arneson, by telephone.

Arneson said there is no work stoppage. He maintained that business has gone on more or less as normal inside the locked studio, which is currently between movie projects. Those inside are staying there for their own safety, Arneson said.

Meanwhile, two sets of directors and producers have flown in by helicopter, skirting the blocked gates, for meetings about potential productions on the 27-acre lot.

The studio’s defiance angers union officials, who contend that members still inside the studio have remained on the job out of fear of being fired.

“There shouldn’t be a normal life going on inside,” snapped Joaquin Martinez Rangel, second-in-command of the union, known by its Spanish acronym, STYM. The union represents about 2,000 film industry technicians, prop masters, assistant directors and laborers across Mexico.

As the standoff entered its second week, both sides awaited a ruling from a federal labor panel that was weighing the circumstances to determine whether the strike is, under Mexican law, a strike at all. Each side accused the other of using threats and other strong-arm tactics to win the backing of the maintenance workers, who make about $120 a week keeping grounds swept and fixing leaky pipes. Studio officials say that wage is double the local pay rate for similar work at other firms.

One of the striking workers, 23-year-old Daniel Jarquin, said company officials had threatened to fire workers who failed to sign up with the competing union, the Film Industry Workers Union. He and other activists said that union is more docile--and thus more to the liking of management--than STYM, which negotiated a two-year contract with Fox in early 1997. The two unions belong to competing labor federations.

Arneson labeled the coercion charge “absolutely false.” He said workers petitioned to switch after their union began calling for a strike amid talks to renew the contract. “Fox’s position is that we respect the right of the workers to affiliate with the union of their choice,” he said.

Despite losing the strike vote 11-4 Tuesday, officials of the picketing union said they did not consider their effort to shut down Fox a failure. Those who voted no “don’t want to lose their jobs, so they’re doing what the bosses tell them,” Martinez said.

Arneson, meanwhile, said the ruling by federal labor officials will determine how soon the next movie project can begin--and how long employees will be hunkered down inside. “It’s up to them how long we’re here,” he said.